


How to Hide the Body

by JacarandaBanyan



Series: Stony Bingo fills [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Domestic Avengers, Faking your own death shouldn't be this hard, Identity Porn, M/M, Natasha cooks like she does everything else, Near Death Experiences, No One Knows Tony Stark Is Iron Man, Not Really Character Death, Secret Identity, Stony Bingo, Tony Stark Feels, bingo prompt, magic nonsense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-06-10 03:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15282354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: No one would ever know that Tony Stark had been Iron Man all along, because there wouldn’t be a body to link the two. Even if the faceplate came off, no one would know because Tony Stark no longer had a face.Tony could become someone good enough for Steve. All he had to do was die.Tony makes a deal for Steve's life, then has to figure out how to deal with the consequences.





	1. Spur-of-the-Moment Necromancy

**Author's Note:**

> Bingo prompt: A picture of Captain America putting his hand on Iron Man's shoulders with their faces cropped out of the picture.

Steve woke up in SHIELD’s medical wing to find the Avengers, Fury, Coulson, every SHIELD agent he’d ever met, and a few that he didn’t think he had crowded around his bedside. He frowned, shut his eyes again and shook his head a bit to clear it, then looked around again. Everyone was still there. 

He did a quick mental inventory. His head felt fine, if a little sleep-cloudy, but that was standard procedure when it came to waking up in a hospital bed. All of his limbs were attached, and nothing was broken. 

In fact, he felt better than ever.

As far as he could tell, there was no reason why everyone ever employed by SHIELD should be forcing medical equipment out of the room in order to make space to stand and stare at him. 

Or rather, almost everyone. There were two notable absences- Tony Stark, the Avengers’ financial backer, and Iron Man, Steve’s best friend since waking up in the twenty-first century, and the man Steve had almost gotten up the courage to ask out for coffee just before all hell broke loose in the Upper East Side. It wasn’t all that surprising that Mr. Stark wasn’t here; he and Steve had never really hit it off. But where was Iron Man?

He wriggled into a slightly more upright position. Instantly a SHIELD nurse was at his side, restraining him while pretending to help support him. 

“No need to move, Captain, I’m sure you feel awful, no need to aggravate anything.”

Steve shook his head and continued sitting up as best he could without disturbing any of the wires hooked up to him, of which there seemed to be far more than usual. “Actually, ma’am, I feel perfectly fine. I would, however, like to know why everyone looks like they’ve seen a ghost.”

There was a moment of silence as the agents exchanged glances before Thor interrupted whatever carefully calculated not-answer they were surely planning on giving him with enthusiastic congratulations.

“You are truly a warrior at heart, Captain! We were all convinced that your injuries were too grave to be healed, and your spirit would move on in the aftermath of our heroic battle. You bled so heartily that your heart gave out, and fair Widow could not locate the throb of life in your wrist, but you have returned to us victorious over death!”

Wow, okay, that couldn’t be right. Surely if he’d lost that much blood he wouldn’t feel so… normal. He raised an eyebrow at Natasha and waited for her to fill in the rest.

The way she looked at him was… unnerving. Like she was waiting for him to start coughing up all that blood he’d supposedly lost. “How much do you remember, Captain?”

“I remember the battle, I think. Did Dr. Doom inexplicably think it would be a good idea to build heavily armed metal bodies for angry magical spirits so that they could wreak havoc upon the physical world?” 

Natasha nodded. “Towards the end of the battle, one of these spirits collapsed a building on top of you before lighting the wreckage on fire. This was after shooting you in the chest and enchanting several knives and other sharp objects to attack you. When Iron Man pulled you out, your list of injuries was so long the nurse’s assistant needed another sheet of paper to finish writing it all down. The highlights include a shattered spine, not having anything left resembling a throat, and a severed leg. You,” she lunged forward and stabbed his chest with her index finger, “should not be alive, much less healthy. You were beyond dead. You were ‘let’s make sure we have all the pieces’ dead.”

“Gave us all a start when your leg spontaneously reconnected.” Clint offered with a smile that was only half-way forced. “That, my friend, was some of the weirdest shit I have ever seen.”

About a hundred questions flooded his throat. He’d been dead? Where any civilians hurt? He had  _ lost _ a  _ leg? _ Did anyone have any theories at all to explain this? 

“Where’s Iron Man?” Nice going Steve, ask the least pertinent question you can think of. So what if Iron Man was the only Avenger who wasn’t there to waiting at his bedside. He probably had to go do something for Stark. No, it didn’t sting at all that his best friend wasn’t here to welcome him back to the land of the living, and besides, superheroes didn’t get what they wanted all the time. He was probably off doing something far more useful than stand around and watch Steve lay around in a hospital bed waiting for the nurses to give up finding an injury on him. 

It didn’t sting at all.

“After he pulled you out of that building, he just sort of, I don’t know, shut down.” Bruce offered. “Wouldn’t talk to anyone except to demand the nurses pay attention to you, even though at that point it was pretty clear you were already dead. After he got Thor to humor him, he just sort of stood there. Said he’d get Stark’s doctor to look at him. It’s been radio silence ever since. We actually thought he’d be here by now. His injuries must be worse than they looked.”

Steve immediately reached for his phone, but Natasha stopped him. “We’ve already tried. All you’ll get is a voice message.”

* * *

Slowly, the hospital room had begun to clear as everyone was assured that yes, Captain America was still alive and yes, it appeared he would stay that way for the foreseeable future. The Avengers stayed, but just about everyone else trickled out over the course of the next hour or so. So it was only the Avengers (and one SHIELD nurse who was determined to find  _ something _ to put down on Steve’s injury forms) who were present when Iron Man finally did show up.

The first thought Steve had was that Iron Man should be in this hospital bed, not him. It was clear that while Stark must have done some work on the suit while Iron Man got medical attention, he had not had the time for anything cosmetic. The suit was peppered with dings and scratches, and soot stains smothered large sections of the suit. 

The nurse, overjoyed to be presented with a patient who clearly had diagnosable injuries, made a bee-line for the new arrival, but Iron Man just waved at her to continue whatever it was she was doing, and she grudgingly left the room for yet another machine to hook up to Steve. 

“I’ve already been seen to.” 

It was a little hard to tell, what with the voice modulator and everything else Iron Man used to safeguard his identity, but the man sounded tired. The kind of tired that reverberated through the soul. The kind that it was unlikely a little sleep would cure. 

He walked unsteadily towards Steve’s bed, devoid of any of the grace he usually exhibited on the battlefield, but with the single-minded determination and slow, steady progress of a toddler stumbling towards something they want and have been told they’ll have to walk to get. He came to rest next to Steve’s heart monitor and went completely still for a second. 

“You gave us all a scare there, Capsicle. Could have sworn you weren’t going to make it.”

“Well, you know me Shellhead, never staying down when I’m supposed to.”

A confused garble of static that Steve had come to associate with laughter issued from the suit’s speakers, though the suit itself didn’t move enough to suggest real, substantial laughter.

“You look like you should be in this bed instead of me.”

Iron Man shrugged. “I’ll be alright. It’s you who nearly lost a leg.”

“Anyone have any theories about that, by the way? Clint says it ‘spontaneously reconnected.’”

Clint gave the various machines hooked to Steve’s chest a supremely unimpressed look. “SHIELD’s got nothing.” The “ _ as per usual _ ” was a muttered afterthought. 

Iron Man reached out to gently brush the little screen that displayed Steve’s heart rate.

“I asked Mr. Stark about that. He said it would probably wind up being one of those ‘impossible to ever know for sure’ kinda things, but that if there were malicious spirits involved, then it’s probably, and I quote, ‘some ridiculous magic mumbo-jumbo that finally worked out in our favor, and about goddamn time, too.’ As far as theories go, it looks like the best we’ve got.”

As nice as it was for one of these magical disasters to finally go their way, Steve was wary of accepting that conclusion at face value. He’d served in the army long enough to have a healthy respect for Murphy’s Law, and that combined with many, many such disasters since waking up in this century was enough to convince him that magical disasters never,  _ ever _ worked out in the Avengers’ favor. The best they could hope for would be that the damage was equally catastrophic to them and whoever they were fighting. 

On the other hand, it was pretty hard to deny that he had died, and while he couldn’t seem to remember doing so, he had the entirety of SHIELD’s medical department as witnesses. And then he had at some point directly after the battle gone from dead to peak health. It was hard to see a downside. 

Bruce was obviously thinking along similar lines.

“Does it strike anyone else as a bit strange that something magical worked out in our favor?”

“Yeah, like, is Steve going to discover further down the line that it’s actually some ancient spiritual curse that prevents him from committing acts of violence, and so he can’t fight alien armies or something?” Clint asked.

Bruce shook his head. “SHIELD already thought of that. Can’t find any traces of active spells or ongoing magic left on Steve or the wreckage. There doesn’t appear to be any side-effects at all, in fact.”

Iron Man shrugged. “Not a lot we can really do about that right now. In the meantime, when are you scheduled for release, Cap? It looks to me like everything’s in order- not quite sure why you’re still here, to be honest.”

Steve groaned and collapsed into the pillows. 

“I think they’re waiting for me to realize I’ve died and go into shock or something. Seeing as I don’t really remember the whole death thing all that well, I seriously doubt that anything will happen at this point, but the nurses won’t listen to reason.”

Iron Man glanced at the door, then back at Steve. It was impossible to tell with the helmet on, but Steve could have sworn he was smirking.

“Hey Cap, what do you say we blow this popsicle stand? I bet I could bust you outta here before anyone notices a thing.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than Steve was yanking wires out of his skin and climbing out of bed. Machines began flatlining, and a chorus of alarms immediately began going off like a flock of honking geese. The thunder of large numbers of people running in the distance started up as SHIELD’s personal army of medical staff came running. Iron Man simply made that shaky, garbled laughter-sound and grabbed Steve as he raced to open the window. 

Someone began banging on the door, and Bruce subtly shifted to block it as Iron Man fumbled with the latch. After a couple seconds, he gave up trying to fit his oversized metal fingers around the mechanism and shattered the glass with a repulsor blast. He twisted around and grabbed Steve around the middle and hoisted him through the glass, taking care not to let any of the remaining shards cut him on his way through. 

Steve looked over his shoulder and saw a frantic medic finally get the door open just as Iron Man sprung off the windowsill and into freefall.

“Captain Rogers, wait! We still need to rescan your kidneys for …” Whatever it was they wanted with his kidneys, Steve never found out. Oh well. It was clear there was nothing wrong with him, even the nurses admitted that much. They just couldn’t  _ believe _ it. 

Iron Man’s suit sprung to life as they plummeted, and by the fifth floor they were flying horizontally. He turned to Steve as he adjusted his angle of flight so that they sailed just over the Manhattan buildings.

“How about milkshakes?”

Steve threw back his head and laughed. He was out of the hospital with all of his injuries mysteriously healed, flying with Iron Man, the man who solidly held the position of Steve’s Favorite Person in the Twenty-First Century. 

Steve wasn’t sure this day could get any better.

* * *

Tony wasn’t sure this day could get any worse.

It had been a normal battle; Doom was doing something evil with magic, a vast chunk of city needed to be evacuated, Stark Industries would be paying obscene amounts of money to help cover the damages, everything to be expected. 

The fight was  _ over _ , goddamnit. 

They were supposed to be in the clear. 

Steve had taken some hits, okay, but surely he’d had worse before? Hadn’t they  _ all _ taken some hits? Everyone knew how this story ended- a trip to SHIELD medical, some complaining, some paperwork, and a dose of Fury’s can’t-you-people-go-one-day-without-bleeding-on-something-important glare for everyone. That was how it always worked. 

Sure, the flying knives were creepy, but hey, all it took was a few repulsor blasts to the metal faces of those magical robots from Hell (seriously, Doom, could you possibly have come up with a worse idea?) and that little problem went away. All they really needed to do was a bit of clean-up, take care of the last couple of nuisances, and all would be well. Iron Man would fly to ‘get Mr. Stark to do some repairs,’ then later that night Tony would either work up the nerve to sit across the dinner table from Steve Rogers, Perfect Human Being TM and love of his life or drown in cliched angst over the utter impossibility of anything ever coming from his little infatuation from the safety of his lab. 

It was no secret that while Steve was friends with Iron Man, nothing of the sort could be said about Iron Man’s ‘boss,’ Tony Stark. 

Then the building was collapsing, and the wreckage was on fire and no matter how many times he called Steve over the coms, Steve wasn’t responding.

Well, if Mr. Perfect wasn’t responding, then Iron Man didn’t have to either. Tony proceeded to completely ignore the rest of the team’s attempts to talk to him and dove into the wreckage after Steve.

When he finally found Steve’s body, he knew that was what he had found- a body. Every once in awhile his chest might twitch, but even that was stopping. Smoke inhalation, burns, bullet wounds, cuts, broken bones, who knew what else- there was only so much the Serum could do at once. Tony would be dragging a corpse back out.

He started pulling and dragging anyway.

_ It wasn’t fair. _

There was a movement near Steve’s elbow.

Instantly Tony was on it, repulsors already lit.

It was one of the spirit-things from before. Without its protective metal body, it was actually quite weak. It must have been the one Steve had been fighting when the building collapsed. The thing seemed to be going haywire- sparks showered from it with each twitch. 

JARVIS came on over the speakers. 

“Sir, I’m sensing some unidentified substances in the air. I would suggest you leave the area as soon as possible for your own safety.”

“No dice, JARVIS, I’m not leaving without Cap. In fact, I think I’m going to shoot this thing to kingdom come, then pull Cap out of here.”

“Sir, I would not advise-”

“Don’t want to hear it, JARVIS.”

Tony fired off several repulsor blasts at the thing, watching its form turn hazier and less stable with each hit. By the final blast, the thing had all but collapsed in on itself.

_ It wasn’t fair. _

Tony should have been quicker, should have  _ been _ there. Maybe if Steve hadn’t been alone, this wouldn’t have happened. If he could have done something, anything, maybe Steve wouldn’t be lying there dying. Tony tugged a little harder on Steve’s body. Steve didn’t budge, so Tony threw a little more power into the tug. Steve finally shifted, but with a horrible ripping sound. Blood started pouring from his leg.

God damn it. If only Tony could  _ do _ something. Steve was goodness and justice incarnate- he didn’t deserve this. Tony was the one who deserved this kind of punishment,  _ he _ was the one with demons, the one with stains on his soul, the one who had made all the wrong choices and let other people pay for them for years before he finally got what had been coming to him.

If only he could do something.

The spirit shook harder, flashing brighter and brighter as it twitched itself apart.

“Sir, I’m sensing an increase in unknown substances in the air. I really must recommend immediate action.”

_ He wished he could do something. _

“What would you be willing to do for that wish?”

Tony whipped around. The spirit made an effort to sit up, only to collapse again with another explosion of sparks. It was weakening with each passing second, but hadn’t quite lost its form.

“What did you say?”

“I asked you what you’d be willing to do to help your friend.”

The bleeding from Steve’s leg continued; if anything, it was increasing. Bloodstains spread like advancing armies across the material of his uniform.

“Anything.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Steve’s chest twitched again. The flames from the wreckage licked higher and higher, casting strange, dancing shadows across his soot-stained face.

The spirit dragged itself a little closer to Tony. 

“Here’s the deal; I need energy to heal myself. You give me what I need, and I’ll heal him too. But I’m warning you, I’ll need  _ a lot _ . Magic’s all give-and-take, you see, and these are pretty high returns you’re asking for. I’d make up your mind fast if I were you.”

_ Are you sure this is a good idea, Stark? _ Of course it was. Anything that got Steve out of here alive was a good idea. 

“Deal.”

* * *

Steve felt just the littlest bit ashamed of his relief upon hearing JARVIS’s assurances that Mr. Stark was away on business and wouldn’t be joining the Avengers for dinner. It took a good deal of his daily tolerance quota to put up with the former Merchant of Death, and he wasn’t entirely sure he had enough patience to deal with him after the day’s ordeal. He felt bad about it, of course; the man was feeding, clothing, arming, housing, and paying all other expenses for the entire team. But Steve had quickly found that the man was a much more enjoyable person in the abstract than in the flesh. If Mr. Stark was away on business, then not only would the Avengers get to eat in peace, Iron Man might actually get to dine with them. By dine, of course, he meant drink creatively-titled smoothies via a straw jammed through the mouth-grate on his faceplate, but he’d still be with them. All too often, Mr. Stark would call his bodyguard down to his lab for hours on end to fix or upgrade the armor. 

Iron Man had been serious about the milkshakes. That in itself was wonderful and unexpected; Iron Man always went right home to fix up the armor. Not once in all the time Steve had known him had he stuck around beyond helping to clean up. After the first couple of attempts by the other Avengers to keep him around for a post-battle celebration, he’d finally told them that that would require he remove certain bits of the suit, before informing them that certain parts of the suit couldn’t come off.

Certain parts of the suit were all that was keeping him alive. 

After that revelation, they’d all backed off a bit. All he needed to say was ‘it’s for the suit,’ and the Avengers would all but leap out of his way. Usually he wasn’t gone that long if the Avengers planned on doing something- after some nudges, he’d agreed that there was nothing wrong with joining in ‘team bonding.’ But if there wasn’t anything going on, he was liable to disappear for hours on end. The current record was three days. 

Iron Man strode down the hallway towards the kitchen, which was odd seeing as he only ever made an appearance in that particular room when he absolutely had to. The gauntlets weren’t very conducive to the fine motor skills required to utensils, and Iron Man acted like the idea of cooking was somehow personally offensive. He usually slid into his place at the table at the last second, when he ate with them at all.

“So, Capsicle, what’s for dinner?”

“I take it you can eat with us tonight then? Mr. Stark doesn’t have work for you? You don’t need to charge the suit?”

Iron Man nodded absently as he grabbed a blender and started throwing in fruit and ice. “Mr. Stark made some upgrades to the main power system of the suit. It’s a lot more efficient now, so I might actually get to eat with the team on a regular basis. Haven’t tested it yet, so I don’t know exactly how much time I can go without charging, but certainly longer than before. And no, he told me to focus on Avengers business until he gets back.” He fiddled with the little dial on the side of the blender, then hit the on switch and turned around to face Steve. “So, what needs doing? Besides cooking. I can’t cook. I can produce multiple witnesses to testify on this.”

Steve smiled and started pulling out knives and a cutting board. 

“Well, we’re having soup tonight. Natasha should be here soon; it’s her recipe. Maybe she’ll have something for you to do.”

Natasha didn’t have anything for Iron Man to do, but it turned out that while he couldn’t cook, he could work under (specific, constantly monitored) direction. The suit had a surprising number of additions that Steve had never seen him use in battle. 

“I need you to chop this onion up, and when I say chop, I mean in neat, evenly-sized pieces. Think you can handle a knife that precisely?” Natasha asked as she started mixing the broth. 

Iron Man didn’t answer, but the metal plates covering his fingers shifted and pulled back to allow a web of small blades to inch forward. Then he thrust the gauntlet down on the onion. Steve tried to warn him that he was using way too much force, but only managed to stutter out a ‘hey, I don’t think-’ before the onion was flattened with a wet  _ squa~ash _ that sent little drops of onion sauce flying. One drop hit Clint, who was unfortunate enough to be standing just outside the kitchen. His eyes immediately watered up. 

“Hey, Natasha, what was that for?”

“It was Iron Man.”

“Come on, Nat, we all know Iron Man doesn’t- oh, hey, didn’t see you behind the fridge. What does Stark even need a fridge that big for? That thing could hold Thor and still have room leftover. Does this mean you’ll be able to make it to dinner tonight?”

Iron Man lifted his gauntlet. The remains of the onion dripped from the palm. The repulsors looked remarkably less intimidating when covered in crushed vegetables. 

“Yeah, I can stay tonight. Probably tomorrow too, and every day until Mr. Stark gets back from his business trip. He told me to focus on Avengers business while he was gone, so I should be able to make most dinners. And Mr. Stark definitely needs that fridge to be that size. He’s feeding five other people, and one of those people is a god.”

“Six other people.” Natasha piped up from the stove. “And I thought I told you what ‘chopped’ meant. I didn’t want a pulverized mess. Here, just let me do it.”

“Yeah,” Clint piped up, “Doesn’t he feed you? Should we be staging some sort of intervention?”

Iron Man shrugged and shook the rest of the onion remains from the gauntlet before retracting the blades. “I don’t count. I don’t eat much, and what I do eat doesn’t take up any space in the fridge. And no, for the last time, Clint, I don’t need to be ‘saved’ from Mr. Stark.”

Steve looked up from the fleet of measuring cups he’d been working with to stare. “I thought you only drank smoothies around us so you wouldn’t have to remove the faceplate!” 

Iron Man looked uncomfortable.

“Is the faceplate one of the bits that can’t come off? Is that it? I thought you just ate in the workshop with Mr. Stark!” Steve turned to Clint, whose eyes were still leaking. “Did you know?”

Clint gave his eyes one last swipe. “Nah, I thought it was just to keep us from seeing his face.” He looked over Steve’s shoulder at Iron Man. “So does the whole faceplate need to stay on, or just parts of it? ‘Cause that’s brutal, man, not being able to eat anything but smoothies.”

“I drink coffee too,” Iron Man pouted.

Steve couldn’t believe this. He’d always sort of imagined that one day Iron Man would trust them enough to remove the faceplate for a while, let them see his human side the way they’d let him see theirs. He’d been losing sleep trying to figure out what he’d done wrong when Iron Man couldn’t even remove the faceplate long enough to have a decent meal! Talk about self-centered, Rogers. Always making this about yourself, when you should have made an effort to find out about your friend’s problems. Stupid, stupid!

“And I  _ can  _ take it off,” Iron Man half-said, half-muttered, “it’s just best if I don’t.”

Clint stared. “That’s rough, man.”

Natasha had been rather quiet throughout this exchange. Steve wondered if she’d guessed it already. But when he tried to interrogate her with his eyes (always a terrible idea) she just raised one eyebrow and asked Clint to set the table. The soup was almost done, and she didn’t think the cook should have to worry about details like utensils and napkins.

Once Thor and Bruce had been recalled from video games and the lab respectively, Natasha brought the soup off the stove. 

Steve thought dinner should look like this every night- no one hurt, everyone present, the looming shadow of impending doom notably absent. “So Natasha, what can you tell us about this? I don’t think I’ve ever had this particular soup before.”

She didn’t even look up as she started ladling it into each Avenger’s bowl and passing them around. “It’s called Kharcho. It comes from Georgia, the country not the state, and is popular in Ukraine and parts of Russia. It is an excellent stealth dish for getting rid of targets as it contains many different plants shopped up in small but variable pieces. The variety of colors and shades of the ingredients, combined with this, makes it an easy dish to poison. For instance, I could easily have chopped up rosary peas beforehand, put them in a plastic bag to make them look like an herbal ingredient, and added them in without it looking suspicious or out of place. A single seed of rosary pea can be fatal to both children and adults, and after consuming large quantities through this soup, the target would suffer nausea and vomiting, which would advance into convulsions and liver failure and eventually death.”

She looked up and noticed her teammate’s stares.

“Not that I would use rosary peas. Death takes several days, and someone might diagnose it. Of course I’d pick something more efficient and fast-acting. Rosary peas are merely an example.”

Steve made a mental note; don’t ask Natasha about her cooking.

* * *

Tony locked down the lab and blacked out all of the windows before he began working on the suit.

Dinner was nearly a disaster, but had wound up being rather enjoyable. If this was what he was missing every time he had to turn down an invitation, then perhaps the consequences of his little deal would be easier to live with. 

“JARVIS!” He called.

“Yes, Sir?”

“Get me a mirror. Then prepare all of my scanning equipment.”

“Pardon me, Sir, but I’m have been getting abnormal readings from your suit-”

“Just get me something reflective, J.”

“Of course, Sir.”

A holographic screen appeared before him. It flashed white, then silver, then became reflective. 

He hadn’t had the time (or the inclination) to investigate the…  _ effects _ of his little deal between leaving the battle and going to rescue Steve from overzealous doctors. He’d fixed up the suit as best and as quickly as he could. Couldn’t have a hole in the thing or his little secret would be completely blown and Steve would never like or trust him again because he was  _ Tony Stark _ all along. As soon as the suit was airtight and fully functional he’d hightailed it to the hospital.

But now that he’d witnessed the miracle of Steve’s recovery, it was time to come to terms with the price of that miracle.

Tony took a deep breath and flipped up the face plate. 

The suit was empty.

There it was, the final confirmation that Tony Stark no longer had a body. 

Well, that wasn’t technically true. If one counted a body as a physical container for the soul that could interact with the physical world, then the armor could be called his body. Which meant that this whole debacle wasn’t nearly as bad as it appeared at first blush.

Oh look, a bit of smoothie had dribbled inside the face mask. Wonderful. He’d have to be more careful about food in the future, make sure to make it look like he needed to eat while not actually consuming anything. Though he was sure he’d drunk more than this, this was barely a dribble. Maybe he still did need to eat, despite not having a body? He’d have to run some tests… 

He reached out and grabbed a rag from the bench. It took two tries, as the gauntlet accidently knocked it to the floor the first time. He rubbed irritably at the smoothie dribble, then tossed the rag aside.

“So, JARVIS, what do your sensors tell you?”

“It appears to me, Sir, that the suit is significantly lighter than it should be, and that this is most likely because there is no sign of a pilot inside. Should I contact Miss Potts-”

“No, don’t tell Pepper. I’ll-I’ll figure it out, and then I’ll tell her, but she doesn’t need to know just yet. I couldn’t just leave him to die, J, I just couldn’t, and now Steve’s all better so obviously I made the right call, but, but I, I guess I’m gonna be living in the suit permanently ‘cause otherwise I don’t think I can, I don’t know, hold blowtorches and stuff like that, but it’s okay and I’m not panicking because this was the right decision and Steve’s alive but he doesn’t  _ know _ and I have to tell Pepper and everything’s alright, just not right this second.”

“I am somehow unconvinced, Sir.”

Tony clenched the gauntlet. “I had to do this, JARVIS. I don’t regret it, I just… don’t know what this means yet.” He smiled weakly. “Besides, it seems like a win to me. I can’t count the number of times I wished I could have just sprung into being as Iron Man, without all of the  _ Tony Stark _ baggage.”

Now he just needed to come up with a plan to hide that his alter ego was now his only ego. Without a body, he couldn’t make that meeting he’d scheduled, or make any televised appearances, and someone else would have to attend Ms. Turner’s charity party in his stead. His ‘on a trip’ story would only work for so long. 

However… 

A bold idea began to coalesce in his mind. _Tony Stark_ was always insubstantial anyway. A flashy persona, nothing more. The parts of himself that he wanted to shed like dirty clothes were the defining traits of _Tony Stark_. And Steve didn’t deserve someone like that. However, while _Tony Stark_ may be worthless, Iron Man was not. Iron Man was the best of him; Iron Man, if he reached, could be worthy of Steve Rogers. 

It had been impossible before, to be Iron Man without being Tony Stark. But now- it wasn’t like he could go to Board meetings like this. Everyone knew Iron Man and Tony Stark were close. No one would see anything amiss if Tony left the majority of his fortune to his close friend in the event of his death. Only a few people had to know - Pepper, Rhodey, maybe Happy- that Tony Stark did not, in fact, have a little… accident while away from his body guard on a business trip. And there were so many convenient ways for Tony Stark to die. He did have a heart condition, after all. Everyone could win- Pepper gets to be CEO of Stark Industries, the Avengers keep their funding, no one had to put up with Tony Stark anymore, and Tony could truly become Iron Man. 

No one would ever know that Tony Stark had been Iron Man all along, because there wouldn’t be a body to link the two. Even if the faceplate came off, no one would know because Tony Stark no longer had a face. 

Tony could become someone good enough for Steve. All he had to do was die. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony disposes of the "body."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I did not mean to take this long to update. Unfortunately, I got super focused on Tony Stark Bingo, and that ended up consuming my limited time. Better late than never, I guess?

“So, Jarvis, how do you think I should I fake my own death?”

“Sir, while this is technically a workable course of action, given your current lack of a body, I really do think that you should consider other, less extreme options.”

Tony ignored that completely. What else could he do? Tony Stark could never make another public appearance, not without a physical body. Sure, he could try and do video conferences via a wax model of himself or something, but that wasn’t viable long-term. 

Besides, the more he thought about it, the more losing his body seemed like a blessing in disguise. This was his chance to truly cast aside Tony Stark, the symbol, and all of the baggage that came with it. So long as he let Rhodey and Pepper in on his plan, no one would mourn. He had always attributed his good deeds to Iron Man, so in the eyes of the world Tony Stark was still just an irresponsible, alcoholic playboy who lived to boost his own ego and make things difficult for others. 

He smiled, then remembered that he had no body to smile with. Perhaps he should try and make the Iron Man mask more expressive? Perhaps if he embedded some screens in the faceplate he could display emojis or something. Clint would appreciate that. He made a mental note to come back to that idea. 

The only complication was that he wouldn’t be able to produce a corpse, so he’d have to make sure and off himself in a way that would destroy his body. Perhaps he would fall off a yacht and get eaten by a shark? Or maybe a science experiment gone wrong that turned his body to dust?

On top of that, he’d have to make sure that Iron Man didn’t take any blame for failing as his bodyguard.

Science experiment was probably the best way to go, all things considered. It would be believable enough, considering what he did for a living, and would mean he could make stuff up if people asked any uncomfortable questions. First he’d have to update his will, though, so that everything went to ‘Iron Man.’ He’d have to start the build up now, of course, so that it would seem less sudden when he announced his ‘death.’ It wouldn’t take much, just enough to keep his death from being totally out of the blue.

The more he thought, the brighter he felt. Tension he hadn’t even realized he was carrying flowed away from his mind like dirty water. 

“How about this? I’ll order a wax model of myself today, and rig it up with some basic motor functions. Really basic, like not even Dum-E level stuff.” He flicked his fingers and a screen appeared in front of him. He pulled up a wax figure website and kept talking, growing more excited and dramatic with each line.

“Once that’s ready, you stage a giant light show and play a bunch of weird sounds full blast through the sound system. Maybe I’ll even break out a fog machine. I’ll rush down to save me, then you’ll lock down the lab and won’t let anyone else in because of some sort of danger protocol. I’ll try and save the wax doll from a really bright light while alarms go off in the background. You’ll make sure to capture it all on camera, of course, so we can have some sort of evidence. Then I’ll grieve, panic, all that good reality-TV stuff a good friend-slash-bodyguard should do in this situation, then go back out and announce with heavy heart that Mr. Stark has  _ tragically _ passed.”

He bowed to an invisible audience, then straightened up again and did a little dance for joy. The armor clanged around him, but he paid it no mind. He felt like a little kid again.

“Please don’t mistake my participation for approval, Sir.”

“Don’t be such a worrywart, J. It’ll be great. I’ll finally be able to bond with the team, hang out with Steve more, spend less time trying to please boring old investors, all that stuff you’re always telling me to do.”

“If you say so, Sir.”

* * *

Steve nearly had a heart attack when he came into the kitchen after his morning run and found Iron Man making what appeared to be a coffee, Red Bull and banana smoothie. And were those pancakes on the stove?

Iron Man turned and nodded at Steve. “Good morning, Cap. Stick around for a few more minutes and breakfast will be ready. Don’t worry, I’m not actually cooking, the pancakes are all JARVIS.”

Steve hesitated, but eventually walked over to join Iron Man by the blender. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you show up for breakfast.” 

Iron Man shrugged. The movement was accompanied by whirring servos and clanking plates. It was the loudest shrug Steve had ever heard. 

“With Mr. Stark out of town, I’m finally free to show up.” 

“Any idea how long he’s going to be away for? You usually have to go with him on the longer ones, so he should be back soon, right?” Steve tried not to sound bitter, or over-eager, or anything other than mildly curious. The longer Mr. Stark was away, the longer he could have Iron Man to himself. Or, that is to say, the longer Iron Man could focus on the team. 

Iron Man just shrugged.

“Well, it can be hard to tell with him. It’s not that he’s  _ erratic _ , per se, it’s just that he likes to make impulsive decisions.  _ Normally _ I’d expect him back within the day if he wasn’t taking me with him, but there’s no way to really know. He’s been working on some new project, and it’s consumed all of his attention.”

“He really does monopolize your time, doesn’t he?” The second his own words registered, he hid a wince. That was definitely not what he had meant to say. Good job not sounding bitter, Steve. Way to go. 

Iron Man chuckled mechanically. The sound of it never failed to make his stomach swoop. 

“Well, he  _ is _ my employer.”

“You know the Avengers would take you on as a full-time, official member, right?” Steve asked earnestly. 

“I know. But Mr. Stark, he- well, he’s changed a lot in the last year. Turned over a whole tree’s worth of new leaves. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s a whole new man since that kidnapping fiasco, but he’s certainly trying to use that big brain of his for the betterment of his fellow man, which is the best you could ever hope for. I’d hate for something to happen to him  _ now, _ when he’s making all these breakthroughs in clean energy.”

“Most of that is stuff that  _ he _ does, though.  _ He’s _ changing,  _ he’s _ making scientific breakthroughs,  _ he’s _ putting his brain to use. What about  _ you? _ Where do you fit into all that?”

It wasn’t that Steve didn’t value Mr. Stark’s work. He did understand how important it was, and how much of an impact it was making. But sometimes, a small voice whined in the back of his mind  _ ‘can’t we get along without all that fancy stuff of his?’ _

Iron Man turned his attention away from Steve, back to the blender. His over-large fingers fiddled awkwardly with the cord. 

“Mr. Stark has a lot of enemies.”

“Personal enemies!” Steve said. “Surely he doesn’t need an Avenger constantly around to protect him from personal enemies?” 

“Steve,” Iron Man said softly, “How can I be a full Avenger if I can’t give my identity up?”

The words hit like a punch to the gut, but he didn’t let himself pause.

“We all trust you, Iron Man. We wouldn’t ask that of you.”

He’d  _ want _ it of him, of course, but he couldn’t help that. Iron Man had reasons for hiding his identity, and Steve had to respect his choices. Even worse than that smoldering  _ want, _ though, was how he felt when his friend said things like that in that specific tone, the one that said ‘there’s no place for me here, but thanks for pretending.’ Steve hated that tone. He was pretty sure everyone else did as well. 

Iron Man pushed the stop button on the blender instead of answering, then reached around Steve’s head to reach for a mug from the cabinet. He carefully poured the strangely-colored result into the mug, then unplugged the blender and put it in the sink. Then he carefully signalled something at one of the ubiquitous security cameras. In response, the stove turned itself off. Iron Man carefully grabbed some plates, then started serving up the pancakes. 

Just when Steve had given up on getting any sort of response, he finally spoke. 

“I know that you trust me. I promise, I do. And I’m honored. I’m just not sure you would feel the same way if I took the faceplate off. So let’s not talk about that for now, okay? I rarely get to eat breakfast with anybody but Mr. Stark, so I’d like to make the most of it.”

How could Steve do anything but agree to that?

They sat down across from each other at the table, Steve with his heaping plate of pancakes and Iron Man with his absurd smoothie. 

“So,” Iron Man asked, “What is it that you usually do after breakfast? Play with puppies? Cure children’s tragic illnesses? Turn into a bald eagle and soar above national monuments?”

Steve smiled. Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded like a dig at his propaganda image, but here, sitting in the sun with a clear schedule and his best friend in the twenty-first century across from him, it soothed something in his chest that hadn’t been touched since his time with the Howling Commandos.

* * *

“Whatcha working on, Brucie-Bear?” Tony asked.

Visiting Bruce in his lab was its own pleasure, but today he wasn’t just here for to have fun and bounce ideas off his fellow scientist. Bruce was the only Avenger that he was at all close to as Tony Stark rather than as Iron Man. If he was going to fake his own death, he’d have to lay the groundwork for Iron Man’s take-over of Tony Stark’s non-corporate duties as tech guy first. It wouldn’t do for him to lose his science buddy, and he was absolutely positive that if he tried to stay silent when the team encountered tech issues, he’d explode. 

Admittedly, the armor was a little unwieldy for the lab. He couldn’t really weave between the instruments and holo screens the way he could with his body, and he’d already reached out to grab something only to abruptly put the brakes on when he remembered that the gauntlet fingers were the size of sausages and didn’t have anywhere near the fine motor control needed hold a delicate test tube. 

“Iron Man, how are you,” Bruce called from the other side of the lab. “If I’d known you were coming I’d have cleared some of this away. Here, let me put the screens away.”

“No need, I got it. I’ll be like a metal leaf in the wind.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow at him. “That sounds an awful lot like ‘heavy, unwieldy piece of metal falling from the sky’ to me.”

“You wound me, Bruce. You can’t see it through the suit, but I’m really hurt. There’s blood and everything.” He twisted around a corner and ducked a floating confidence interval to reach the worktable. 

“Sounds like a biohazard,” Bruce smiled. He moved over to the side, leaving space for Tony to approach and take a closer look at the row of test tubes lined up on the tabletop. 

“So what magic are you whipping up today?”

Bruce grinned. He’d been smiling more and more since the Avengers became an official team, but Tony still enjoyed each and every one. “That’s actually the opposite of what I’m trying to do.”

“Oh?”  
“I’ve been working with Thor to try and make some antidotes for magic.”

Tony went cold.

“An antidote for magic? Like, something to undo it?”

Bruce nodded. “Exactly. It’s kind of absurd that we keep having to have Thor go talk to someone on Asgard, and let’s be real, we all know that most of the time when he says ‘I’ll investigate back home’ he means he’s running to Loki and asking if he’s done that spell before. Clint would probably be a lot happier, at the very least, if Loki wasn’t our go-to magic contact.”

“Yeah, that’s, that’s a good thought. Say, in theory, what are you aiming for? Like, preventative or after-the-fact? Are we going to start rubbing some anti-magic cream on our gear so it doesn’t get spelled, or are you planning on dealing with it as it happens?”

“As it happens, I think,” Bruce said. “I initially wanted something a little more proactive than that, but I don’t think I can get it to work. There’s just too many different types of magic to guard against.”

This was a disaster. If Bruce ever used this antidote of his on Steve, it could undo everything. Magic was what saved Steve from bleeding to death, and upsetting though it may be to rely on something so unscientific and hand-wavy as magic, Tony couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Steve.

“Made any progress?”  _ Please say no please say no please say no- _

“Not as much as I’d like, but yesterday’s samples responded better to one treatment than the other, so at least we have a direction to start looking in now.” He rubbed his neck absently, and Tony was abruptly and uncomfortably aware that he no longer had a neck. “I mean, it’s not my main project right now, so it’s not getting as much time as it probably warrants, but it’s magic you know? If I spend to long on it, I start wondering out loud what I’m doing with my time. It’s just so difficult to pin down scientifically, though Thor insists that specialists in Asgard manages to do just that.”

Tony forced a chuckle through the microphone. 

“I always hated magic. Well, you’ll let me know if you find anything interesting, right?”

“Of course. I was meaning to email your boss about it actually, but between Steve’s injury and analyzing the samples, I just didn’t get around to it.”

“Well, I can assure you that both Mr. Stark and myself are happy to help in any way we can. In fact, he was taking a look at some of the artifacts we recovered yesterday, hoping to get some magic energy readings or something. I’ll let him know you’ve been working on this. I should probably be heading down to his lab anyway.”

He excused himself absently, hoping Bruce wouldn’t notice anything odd about his disinterest in helping him out, and fled. 

* * *

Steve knew it was Mr. Stark’s building, and that Mr. Stark was a scientist, and that his job literally required him to do crazy experiments in that mysterious lab of his that only those closest to him were ever allowed to enter. And it was usually fine. There might be the odd explosion, but for the most part the lab was just a theoretical place where the he disappeared for days on end, only to return with “new toys,” as he so annoyingly described their gear. If anything, Steve  _ liked _ the lab. When Tony was in the lab, he wasn’t  _ here, _ with the rest of them, intruding on their little found family.

Even the amount of time Iron Man was required to spend down there playing lab assistant weren’t so bad. Iron Man spoke fondly of the lab, when he spoke of it at all. Iron Man liked science, probably far more than anyone else on the team but Bruce. If he was happy, then Steve was happy.

But for whatever reason, today the lab was a nightmare.

The explosions were irregular, but usually occurred about once every half-hour. Just when his teeth were no longer on edge, the floor would shake again and adrenaline would flood his body. Loud bangs and shrill whistles interrupted any attempts at conversation, and at one point purple smoke poured out of one of the vents, setting off the fire alarm. 

Iron Man assured them that Mr. Stark had everything under control, but even his patience seemed to be fraying. He was distracted, constantly rushing back to deal with some catastrophe or another, only to reappear minutes later, clearly frustrated. Mr. Stark was apparently insistent that everything was under control, despite all the evidence to the contrary. 

God that man could be annoying. 

Things just got worse when as the day went on. He couldn’t even carry on a normal conversation with Natasha, whose mask of calm was full of steadily growing cracks. If Stark didn’t get it together soon, he might have a one-woman riot on his hands. 

Eventually, he retreated to his room, which was slightly quieter than the common room, and tried to get some reading done. Iron Man had recommended some things to him, back when he first came out of the ice, and he was still working his way through the pile. 

* * *

After several hours of buildup and multiple aborted rescue attempts, Tony was reasonably certain that he’d established the danger of the fake experiments. The rest of the Avengers had been driven back to their rooms, so there would be no last minute heroics from anyone else on the team. No one but Iron Man would be there to witness Mr. Stark’s death in real time.

“Start the light show, J.”

An explosion rocked the lab seconds later, followed by colored smoke and blaring alarms. Tony lifted off and dove towards the ‘danger’ at full speed, making sure to call out dramatically as he passed the security cameras. 

He slowed once he’d entered the lab proper and pantomimed looking for a body for the cameras. He’d have to try and save the dummy he’d set up, who hopefully would be too obscured by smoke to properly identify later as anything but who he and Jarvis said it was. 

“Mr. Stark, where are you?” He called. 

The smoke grew thicker. It was a good thing he didn’t have a face anymore, or he’d be smiling so hard it hurt. 

He gave it five more seconds of ‘searching’ before he dove towards the limp form sprawled against the wall like it had been thrown there by an unexpected blast and lost consciousness. He quickly blocked the facial region with his body. It wasn’t likely anyone would be able to see much detail through the security cameras, but it still made him feel better to do it. 

“Mr. Stark, can you hear me? Mr. Stark!”

He shook the doll, then let it fall limp in the gauntlets. 

Wherever Jarvis had gotten the dummy from, they’d done a bang-up job with the face. At this angle, he looked exactly like those old photos of him falling out of the car after drinking too much. 

He gripped the doll tighter, making deep indents where the fingers of the gauntlet dug into the material. A seam popped, but he didn’t loosen his grip. 

He hated that face. Every time he turned around, it was on the front of another gossip rag, part of another scandal, smiling while it announced the development of new weapons in playbacks of old interviews. It was the face tied to all those deaths caused by weapons he hadn’t cared enough to keep an eye on. It assaulted him with guilt every time he looked in the mirror, and turned Steve from jovial friend to detached, disinterested stranger. It was the face that had been made into an object to be packaged and repackaged and sold over and over again since he was a child. It didn’t even belong to him anymore, not really. Tony Stark’s face was a product, or perhaps a symbol of some very specific abstract concept. It wasn’t really fair to even call it  _ his _ face. He certainly hadn’t felt like he owned it for a long time now. 

“Sir, may I proceed with the tragic fire?” Jarvis drawled in his ear.

The brewing tempest in his thoughts calmed. He shook himself mentally and returned to the drama at hand. 

“Sure thing, buddy. Light ‘em up.”

Behind him, a sufficiently sci-fi looking device he’d thrown together exploded, releasing a shock wave and even more colored smoke. Inside the suit he barely even felt it, but all around him anything that hadn’t been stowed in advance cracked or was knocked back from the center of the explosion. Low-level fires broke out, and broken glass caught the blaring alarm lights. The explosion had halfway disintegrated the dummy, and what hadn’t been destroyed was promptly covered in red flames. On the security tapes it would look like the strange fire consumed him bones and all.

Tony sat as though in disbelief and watched as blackness spread unnaturally quickly across his old face. Then, he carefully disengaged his microphone so there was nothing physical to give voice to his words. Once he was sure that he couldn’t make a sound, he began to laugh. 

It felt painful to laugh, but at the same time it was a relief, like he was coughing up a bloody tooth lodged in his throat. He was dead! Tony Stark was dead! His face had gone up in flames forever. His body was gone, and now he was all soul. He had always been split, before- the real Tony, the person he barely dared allow other human beings to glimpse, and Tony Stark the Product, the thing he’d sold to the media and the board and every stranger he met. Now that sepparation was complete. Any image of Tony Stark that he saw from now on was just an image used to tell a story about a man who never was. He was Iron Man now, forever. Iron Man, who had not yet been objectified unedified re-identified until he wasn’t really a person anymore. 

“I’m dead!” He laughed. “I’ve killed Tony Stark! I’m dead!”

He shook with his laughter as last sparking ashes of the dummy disintegrated in his hands. He could start over! He was dead, and now he could finally begin to live right.

At last he turned on his microphone again. 

“Sound the alarm, J. The Avengers’ technical adviser and financial backer has suffered a terrible accident. The team needs to know that Mr. Stark is no longer with us.”

“Of course, Sir.”

He rose to his feet and walked over to the broken windows separating the lab from the stairs. He could hear his steps landing heavily on the floor, but he felt lighter than he could ever remember feeling, like there’d been a millstone around his neck pulling him down into darkness that was just now cut away, letting him float upwards towards the sun. 

* * *

The Avengers alert roused Steve from his slumber. His body reacted without active input from his sleep-addled mind. Muscle memory guided his fingers through the process of putting on his uniform and pulling on his boots.

By the time his mind was fully online, he was halfway to the roof launchpad. The alert didn’t specify a location, so he kept heading that way. 

He emerged into the late summer night, glad that at least it was cooler than during the day. Iron Man stood in the middle of the roof, facing the horizon, where the first rays of the sun were just starting to emerge from over the horizon. From where Steve stood he looked like an ominous, anonymous silhouette. More than that, though, his stiff, downturned shoulders and bent head spoke of loss and pain. 

Steve’s heart squeezed in his chest. 

Thor was already there, and Clint was just behind Steve. Natasha showed up a few seconds later with Bruce in tow. Silence hung like a thick fog over the rooftop, and each new arrival’s voices trailed off within seconds of seeing Iron Man’s defeated posture.

“Where’s the fight?” Clint finally asked. 

Iron Man slowly looked up, then turned to face them. Each movement was careful and precise, so unlike the easy, almost natural way he moved with the suit, like whatever had happened had struck him so powerfully that he had lost his natural grip on the controls. 

“Mr. Stark,” he said in the most monotonous, machine like voice Steve had ever heard, “is dead.”

There was a collective gasp. Iron Man’s insistence that Mr. Stark had dangerous enemies had come true. Steve struggled to put the information together in his head, but death just didn’t fit easily with the man that was more act and advertisement than human. 

A moment later, hope flashed through him, quickly followed by guilt. If Mr. Stark wasn’t around to hold Iron Man back, maybe he could join the team properly. Have meals with them and train with them and not disappear for hours or days on end at the whims of a man whose selfish indulgences were the stuff of modern-day legends. 

He knew he shouldn’t feel that way, especially when Iron Man was so clearly affected by it, but he couldn’t control his feelings. He could only control what he did with those feelings. He would be there for his friend, he decided, in any way he could. They’d get through this together, and come out the other side stronger.

“What happened?” Bruce asked. 

“There was an explosion. He was working on something dangerous, and it blew up in his face. I couldn’t get to him fast enough; by the time I got there, he was already dead. I couldn’t even save the body. The experiment was still running, and something else went haywire without him there to watch it and destroyed his body. If I hadn’t had the suit, I probably would have died as well.”

“When did this happen?” Natasha asked. Her whole body was drawn as taut as a bowstring. “Why didn’t he tell us he was working on something so dangerous?”

“The explosion that killed him was about twenty minutes ago.” Iron Man’s voice shook through the mask’s speakers. Steve wanted to cross the distance between them and pull him against his chest until that shaking was soothed away, but he squashed the impulse down. Iron Man clearly needed to get this out. There would be time for comfort once he was done. 

“There’ve been kind of a lot of explosions around here, Iron Man,” Clint said. “Were they all like this one that killed him, or what?” 

“Sort of?” Iron Man shrugged. “He was experimenting with some of the magical debris SHIELD we recovered from the fight where Cap did a remarkable impression of Lazarus. He was probably doing something a little bit different each time, but he was always using basically the same stuff.”

For a genius, Stark really was an idiot. Experimenting with magical debris? Really? Even a perpetually careless man like Mr. Stark should have known that that was a recipe for disaster. 

“Did he learn anything at all?” Banner asked. 

“Or was he just throwing stuff at it to see if it burst into flames or not?” Clint added, any semblance of grief clearly wearing away even faster than Steve’s quickly crumbling facade. 

“I’m sure he had some sort of plan,” he said. It was supposed to come out confident yet appropriately sorrowful, but he was pretty sure he didn’t quite manage to get the right balance. He certainly wasn’t  _ happy _ to learn that the man had died, but it wasn’t like losing a teammate. 

“If he did, I hope he wrote it down,” Iron Man said. “I’ll start looking through his notes tomorrow. I know I should start tonight, but it just feels too soon.”

Steve’s control snapped. Before he could stop himself his arms were around Iron Man’s metal-plated shoulders and his head was nestled against the helmet. 

“Take as much time as you need. I know you were a lot closer to him than any of us were. You don’t have to do anything until you’re ready.”

“But-”

“But nothing. You knew him for a long time, it’s natural to mourn him. We’ll all be here for you if you need it.”

Iron Man’s shoulders shook the way they did when he laughed at one of Steve’s outdated jokes. 

“Okay, Steve. I’ll consider it.”

* * *

Later, when the Avengers had finally broken up and gone to their separate rooms to digest the death of the inventor that housed them but was never at home with them and Steve had finally left him alone, Tony released the laughter that had been bouncing around his nonexistent rib cage like an overactive hummingbird. His chest shook, and the plates of the armor shifted and adjusted as though he were parts of an actual body.

He did it. Tony had killed Tony Stark, the tech company brand made flesh, and he’d gotten away with it. He had made a doll in the likeness of his failures and disappointments as a person and burned it to dust. 

The armor had never felt lighter.


End file.
